Scooby-Doo! had been around for decades, but a new series launched in early 2010 with a concept that was intriguing on paper but hard to consume. Every episode of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated carries a chapter number, one through 52. It was the first Scooby-Doo series built as a true serial, with a season-long mystery running under the monster-of-the-week cases. Cartoon Network didn’t make that easy to follow, pulling the show after chapter 13 with no explanation and later stalling Season 2 for seven months. Chapter one aired as a sneak peek on April 5, 2010. The finale aired on April 5, 2013, three years to the day. If you held the thread that long, you have a better capacity than I did.

This time the gang is home in Crystal Cove, a tourist trap that sells itself as the most haunted place on Earth. Staying put gives the kids parents and a town of regulars, like Sheriff Bronson Stone (Patrick Warburton, Zootopia 2) and Fred’s father, Mayor Jones (Gary Cole, Tammy). A faceless tipster called Mr. E (Lewis Black, Jacob’s Ladder) keeps steering them toward a secret in the town’s past. It involves a cursed conquistador treasure and an earlier Mystery Incorporated that vanished. Professor Pericles (Udo Kier, Suspiria) is a parrot. That’s all anyone needs to know.

Fred and Scooby-Doo himself (both Frank Welker, Scoob!) lead a voice cast with real franchise mileage. Shaggy (Matthew Lillard, Scream) comes straight from the 2002 and 2004 live-action films. In five uncredited episodes, original Shaggy Casey Kasem plays Shaggy’s father, in what would be his final performance. Daphne (Grey DeLisle, Hoppers) and Velma (Mindy Cohn, The Facts of Life) take the other two seats in the Mystery Machine while Linda Cardellini (Crystal Lake), the live-action Velma, turns up as the gloriously named Hot Dog Water. The casting stuck, too. Lillard was still voicing Shaggy a decade later in Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! Mitch Watson developed the series and served as head writer, with Victor Cook as supervising director. 

What makes the show stick is its taste in nightmares. Episodes tip their hats to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, Twin Peaks and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Professor Hatecraft (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator) is exactly the joke his name promises, and in “The Shrieking Madness,” Sci-fi/Fantasy writer Harlan Ellison voices himself. It’s a kids’ cartoon with a Lovecraft library card. “Mystery Solvers Club State Finals” heads the other way. That one’s a Hanna-Barbera love letter in the old Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! style, with Jabberjaw and Captain Caveman tagging along. The weak spot is the romance, since relationship drama between the kids eats minutes the mystery could use and it feels shoehorned in to keep the attention of the older crowd.

In 2013, it was confirmed that the show would end at 52 episodes, so this brand-new set holds the whole story. That’s excellent news for those who fear having to double-dip, especially since plenty of fans rank this cult classic as the franchise’s best. Buy this confidence and follow along with this mystery – it’s finally fallen into place.